TENERIFE, Spain (OSV News) — After Pope Leo XIV’s flight from the Canary Islands to Rome was grounded due to mechanical failure before take off June 12, Spain’s King Felipe VI offered the pope a ride home to Rome on the king’s private jet.
The papal plane, a chartered Iberia Airlines plane, was scheduled to depart Santa Cruz de Tenerife at 3 p.m. local time.
After passengers had been seated for more than an hour and a half, the captain came on the intercom with the kind of announcement no passenger ever wants to hear: There had been “an incident with one of the aircraft systems.”
Shortly after, King Felipe VI boarded the aircraft himself and Pope Leo got off of the plane.
A subsequent update from the pilot indicated maintenance crews were attempting to restart the engine by towing the aircraft to face into the wind, suggesting a tailwind may have contributed to the failure.
The effort was unsuccessful. Iberia issued a statement confirming the technical problem could not be repaired on site and that a replacement aircraft was being dispatched from Madrid. All passengers, including cardinals, Vatican security personnel and approximately 80 journalists, were asked to disembark.
Pope Leo and King Felipe walked together across the tarmac, where the king’s private Falcon jet was waiting. The Vatican confirmed Pope Leo would depart aboard the royal aircraft at approximately 6 p.m. local time, with an expected arrival in Rome around 11 p.m. The remainder of the Vatican delegation and the press corps would follow hours later on Iberia’s replacement flight.
Due to the change in aircraft, the pope did not hold his customary in-flight press conference with traveling journalists.
Veteran Vatican correspondent Valentina Alazraki, who has covered more than 166 papal foreign trips since 1979, was among those aboard the papal plane.
Alazraki spoke with OSV News during the long delay on the papal plane about past travel incidents while traveling with St. John Paul II in the 1980s.
“I remember that in 1986, on our way back from India to Rome, it was snowing. We flew over the city several times … but we couldn’t land, so the pilot flew to Naples,” she said.
“Together with the pope, we took the train and arrived in Rome,” she said.
In 1988, bad weather also caused an unplanned landing in South Africa while the papal plane was en route to Lesotho. Alazraki said it was a politically sensitive situation, as John Paul had excluded South Africa from his African itinerary in protest of apartheid. The group was subsequently driven across the border.
As King Felipe’s jet took off shortly after 6 p.m with Pope Leo on board, the king remained on the tarmac and watched the departure alongside local authorities — as did the Vatican press corps, disappointed at the missed opportunity to interview the pope at 30,000 feet in the air.
Courtney Mares is Vatican editor for OSV News. Follow her on X @catholicourtney.
